


don't go gentle

by peradi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, au where the bowcaster didn't work and things all went very wrong, rarepairs, that trope where two characters have sex to piss off a third that's a trope right, this is both smut and a character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 10:15:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10965183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/pseuds/peradi
Summary: Rey is Kylo Ren's prisoner. She finds unorthodox ways to resist. .





	don't go gentle

“Will you entertain a hypothetical with me?”

“I have no patience for your games – “

“I wasn’t talking to you Ren. I was asking the girl.”

“Ah. Our honoured guest –”

“Don’t be so unctuous Ren. You’re not a charming villain in a holofilm. Do you remember what happened? I do – “

“Hux – “

“She’s your a prisoner. Give her the dignity of the truth. Rey. May I call you Rey?”

The girl’s mouth is set in a sharp line. She jerks her head forwards. Hux takes it as consent.

“Rey. Say that Starkiller Base was still operational. Say I had it pointed at a planet. Any planet. A planet with life on it. If I asked you to get on your knees and lick my boots clean in return for the saving of the lives on it, in return for the Order to let the planet be…would you do it?”

“Don’t be disgusting!” barks Ren. His hand twitches to his sabre. Animal fear leaps in Hux’s gut, but he swallows it down. Ren won’t attack him. Not here. Not now.

“Yes,” says Rey. Her eyes are hot with anger. “I would.”

“Of course you would. So would I, if our roles were reversed – if it was a planet full of my soldiers. Would you, Ren? If it was a planet filled with – oh, I don't know – Darth Vader memorabilia? What do you even care about?”

“I would die before abasing myself!”

“Yes you would, wouldn’t you? Skywalker pride. The galaxy weeps for it. Anyway – Rey – thank you for indulging me. It has been educational.”

“Nothing you say is worth anything,” Kylo Ren barks. His helmet distorts his voice deeper, but there is still a distinct whine to it.

“There is a lesson to be learned from everything,” intones Rey, “is there not, Master?”

Kylo Ren visibly jolts. It's repulsive how easily – how quickly – he responds to base flattery. Master. No man worthy of the title revels in it. No king with any power needs to call himself king.

(Call me Lord Snoke, the head of the First Order had said, once.)

“Yes,” he says, attempting to recover a scrap of dignity by standing a little taller, straightening his shoulders. Hux barely restrains from rolling his eyes. “We – we can learn much by studying those who are beneath us.”

“What did you learn from your fight with Finn, Master?” Rey says. She addresses him, but stares at Hux.

Hux feels _hunted –_ and, worse, the air around him is greasy and charged with static, like the throat of a storm. Ren's hand twitches towards his lightsabre, but he does not draw it. His hands curl into fists. Hux was beaten as a child and he recognises that pose very well: it is the stance of a violent man thirsting for blood and holding himself back. Ren's self-control is a leash stretched taut.

“I learned that the Stormtrooper training cannot eliminate the pain responses entirely. He screamed when I severed his hand.”

Rey's throat bobs. The charge in the air thickens.

“But he lived,” she presses.

Sweat beads at Hux's temples.

“Yes. But one day I will find him. And if you are _very good_ I will let you kill him quickly.”

  
  


–

  
  


  
  


“If the bowcaster had fired – “

“Chewie, you can't blame yourself --”

“Princess, I am a soldier. A warrior. The proudest son of Kashyyyk. And my weapon did not fire – “

Leia sits down beside him. Her joints ache; she's growing old. “It did not.”

“ _But if it had – “_

“Chewie, what's the point of this? What is to be gained by overthinking the past? That's a serious question by the way. I spend so much time doing it myself; I really hope that there is something to by gained by it.”

She laughs: dry as cobwebs, and entirely without humour.

Chewie says, “Have you heard from the pilot?”

“He's on the planet. He hasn't found my brother yet. It is entirely possible that Luke is hiding from him.”

“Why didn't you go yourself?”

Anyone else might have prefaced that query with an _if I may_ or _I'm sorry but_ – but not Chewie. He's blunt and brutal as ever. He learned that from Han. Or Han learned it from him. Or they were both always crochety old men. It's hard to tell. When she next sees Han she can –

Oh. No. No she can't. Not now. Not ever. A splinter slides between her ribs and snaps against her heart.

One day, she will stop catching herself thinking such things – _when I see Han –_ one day, the bones of her will realise that he is dead and gone. But that day is not today. It is unlikely to be tomorrow either. The day after – well. Maybe.

Maybe not.

“I am needed here. We're barely holding on, Chewie. And – and it needed to be someone I trusted, someone with the Force. I mean, if Finn had woke – “

“He may never wake, you know. The MedDroids are starting to recommend taking him off life support.”

“Not yet. _Not yet_.” Leia's fingers itch for a blaster, a lightsabre; something to hit; something to fight. But more and more, this war is tumbling from her control. She finds herself nostalgic for Vader: the days of an enemy with a face she can hate without a gram of self-doubt, the giddy thrill of Han's hand in hers, Luke's power running lightning-fast over her skin. Her parents legacy threatening to snap her shoulders. Hard times, yes, but simpler times. “If Finn had woken,” she continues, “I would have sent him; but he didn't, and so I sent Poe. He's Force-sensitive. I trust him with my life. He's a good man. Good men are in short supply.”

“Luke was a good man.”

“Luke _is_ a good man.”

“There's a word in Shryiwook, Princess. It is the worst thing you can accuse anyone of being. It translates to _the one who fled the field of battle, leaving his children behind._ Luke left.”

“Luke did what he thought was right – “

“Luke did what he hated the Jedi for doing. He made our choice for us. He decided we were better off without him, and he _left_.”

  
  


\--

  
  


After Starkiller, Hux deposited Rey and Ren at Snoke's fortress-ship, _The Citadel._ The ship is ancient and unearthly, and Hux was happy to leave it behind. Three standard months passed, and his work rose over him in a tide, swallowing him whole, and he lived precisely how he liked to live: always working, spreadsheets and meetings and snorting stims in the fresher to stay away, plugging his bleeding nostrils up with tissue, biting his fingernails until he tore them away from the quick, and concealing his ruined fingertips with sleek leather gloves. Screaming speeches to the Order, his face boiling red with effort – and the ache of his fingers, and the blood in his nose, and the treaties and the uprisings to quell, and the planets left unmoored and frightened by the destruction of the Hosnian system, aching for leadership, and finding it beneath the dark wings of the Order. Hux worked forty-nine hour days and slept like a child.

But then Ren returned with his 'apprentice'. According to him – and to Lord Snoke – Rey had been thoroughly broken into the perfect little Knight of Ren, ready to be trained and honed into a weapon and, when the time is right, to be loosed against Luke Skywalker. Why this girl is more important than entire galaxies is beyond Hux; he's never been one for starsong prophecies.

He believes in the Force, but he believes it to be a beast with blood on its breath that will reach to caress you – but, in its animal stupidty, it will sever your hand instead.

(Hux doesn't know that he shares this philosophy with living nightmare Luke Skywalker. For many, many reasons this is a conversation he will never have.)

Anyway: Ren assures him that the girl is broken – and precisely because of this, Hux concludes that she is not, because Ren is an idiot, and any man who needs to tell people to call him lord is no lord at all.

  
  


–

  
  


After their little exchange – _would you lick my boots clean to save a planet girl, would you?_ – Ren herds Rey away. She doesn't look back. Her shoulders are slumped, her black hood swamping her face.

_What did you learn from Finn Master –_

(Is she broken? thinks Hux, then immediately answers his own question)

( _Of course not.)_

  
  


\--

  
  


Late that night, when the stims start to wear off and Hux retires, he finds the girl sitting in his bed. It is not intentionally erotic; there is literally nowhere else in his sparse room to sit.

Her legs are crossed. There’s a lightsabre in her lap.

“You’re right,” she says, as he enters, shucking off his coat. His skin crawls with her Force presence. A kind wolf is still a wolf, and he is still not entirely sure whether she is here to aid him or eat his heart. Maybe both. “Sometimes you have to sacrifice your pride to survive. I lived on a desert world for well over a decade. I did terrible things to live.”

“Of course. Ren doesn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot of stuff Ren doesn’t know. Like how to spot someone who wants nothing more than to stab him in the back.”

“Are you referring to yourself or to me?”

“He thinks I’m broken. He thinks that you want to follow Snoke. He thinks I’m his apprentice. He doesn’t know you dream of people calling you Emperor.”

Hux's breath snags. Rey's mouth curls into a crescent moon of a smile, sharp and thin. “You're good at shielding your thoughts, but you're not that good.”

“Does Ren know?”

The unspoken: _does Snoke?_

“He sees your dreams, but he thinks you're an arrogant bastard. He thinks you're idly dreaming. Snoke plans to kill you as soon as you stop being of use.”

Hux had guessed that was the case a long time ago. Still: his heart judders to hear it spoken aloud.

“And what do you think?”

“I think that you think that the universe is mad, and you need to rule it.”

“And – do you have any opinion on my ambitions?”

He sits next to her. Every little hair on his arms rises up. Long ago, he watched a storm in Arkansis. Lightning rent the clouds asunder with greedy crooked fingers. That storm is here, now, in the shape of a girl. Rey's skin is barely enough to contain the power within her.

“I don't care about your ambitions. I'm not strong enough to kill Kylo Ren alone. I'm not strong enough to take on Snoke. Neither are you. And you're good at hiding your thoughts, but you're not that good – you're going to have to act sooner, or they'll work out what you're up to.”

Their faces are very close together. She is young, and she is beautiful, and she is powerful and all of those things make Hux want to kiss her – but most of all, there is a hunger he recognizes in her eyes. It says: I will make the universe mine and I will defend it. Yes. Alone, he cannot defeat Snoke. Alone, neither can she. But both of them are desperate and hungry and know that pride is a gold glittery nonsense, something thorny and ridiculous best discarded when it interferes with one’s true goal.

“The same goes for you,” he says. “How long can you keep this up?”

“Then we agree. I've just got one question.”

“What is it?”

“You could have said anything to test me. Why did you ask if I would lick your boots?” Her nose crinkles up and for one moment Hux gets a glimpse of the girl she could have been if things were different. If he was a different man, he might have smiled at her, made a joke of it, encouraged her to believe that even here, in the belly of darkness, there was laughter to be found, and friendship.

But he's not.

“Kylo Ren is attracted to you. I chose words with a sexual connotation because I knew it would annoy him. There aren't many things that bring me true joy – but annoying Kylo Ren is one of them.”

  
  


–

  
  


A week later, Rey comes into his office and locks the door behind her. “You're right,” she says.

“Excuse me? And yes, make yourself at home,” he adds, for she is already taking off her ridiculous Knight of Ren ™ Billowing Cloak, setting it on the chair opposite his desk, bending to unlace her boots.

“There aren't many things that bring me joy anymore. Finn's barely alive. Luke Skywalker is...somewhere. But there is one thing I can still do.”

She kicks her boots off. Hux places down his datapad, his brows pulling together in confusion –

She starts unbuttoning her blouse.

Oh. _Oh_.

“I hate him. He's not just attracted to me – he's in love with me. At least, he thinks he is. I've been inside his head. It's like the worst parts of the desert, hot and red and screaming. Full of bones and nightmares and whispering voices.”

The blouse is set over the back of the chair neatly. Neatly – because she is still, at heart, a scavenger who has never owned much, and always treasured what she has.

“He wants me for his very own and I hate it. He whispers it at night, you know? He thinks I'm asleep and he says that I'm the universe to him. I don't want to be the universe to anyone. I --”

Her voice catches. Hux stands up, walks around the desk – not to offer comfort, but to help her with her bra, unhooking it, setting it aside carefully. Her breasts are small and round and there's a scar between them, long and crooked.

Hux runs his index finger up it. The flesh is puckered and rough and there are the echoes of suture-marks: this was a wound she had to fix herself. He follows the wound to the jut of her collarbone, and then to the smooth white column of her throat.

“If you do anything I don't want you to, I can kill you,” she says, flatly. Heat shoots straight to Hux's groin at the thought. “But I don't think you will. And I'm not going to lick your boots.”

“Oh, what a pity,” Hux says, catches her nape and kisses her. She tastes of – well. Wet. Warm. Human. He's a little disappointed. He hoped that he would kiss her and taste the Force itself, electricity and the endless power between stars.

Then he feels tendrils of _something_ – invisible, crawling power – sneaking up his chest, popping his shirt open, sinking cold and icy into his heart, pressing – infuriatingly lightly – against his throat.

“Oh,” he breathes, pulling back. Rey's smile is sharp and knowing and _smug._

“You like that?”

“Oh _yes_. Keep going.”

The pressure on his throat intensifies. He picks Rey up – she's so _light_ , something so monumental should not be so light, this girl is worth more than galaxies to Kylo Ren –

And he's going to fuck her on his desk. He's going to fuck her _on his desk_ , the Chosen One of the Force, the girl who will (apparently) destroy Luke Skywalker and the Jedi's legacy, he's going to have her on his desk, Rey who is worth more than any star you care to name. It occurs to him, with shattered-glass clarity, that his Order could burn to ashes and Snoke and Ren would not care – as long as this girl was still here, as long as they could continue their ridiculous plan to hunt down Skywalker.

She squirms out of her leggings. “The galaxy's bigger than the Jedi, than the Sith, than the Knights,” she pants as he kisses her stomach, her thighs, pausing every now and then to really commit the sprawled-out decadence of her to memory. “It's bigger than any of that. People matter more. I don't care about destiny, I care about – “

Her voice cuts off; her hips buck forwards. Hux buries his face between her thighs, struggling to breath – partly because she's grinding her cunt against his mouth, but mostly because she's using the Force to bear down on his throat. He mewls, appreciative and shameless, and when he finds the rhythm she likes he keeps doing it, sliding his tongue over his clit until his jaw starts to ache from the repetition.

(For those curious: her cunt doesn't taste of galaxies and power either. He's not complaining.)

When she comes, she catches the back of his head and something in him _opens_ and he's – he's not coming with her, but he is, and his mind slides into hers, and he sees stars, nebulas, glittering galaxies whirling past, senseless and infinite.

 _People matter more_ he thinks, randomly, dazed and _shaking_ and, somehow, still hard. _I don't care about destiny or Jedi, everything I have I made, everything I am I worked for –_

 _Yes, yes, the Force doesn't give me my destiny, I **take it** – _Rey thinks, hot and red and her thoughts sear into his skull.

He kisses her again, winds her long hair around his fist and pulls her head back. “Look at me,” he pants. “I want to remember your face. I want – “

“I can hear what you want,” she says. “You're thinking so loudly that I'm astonished the whole ship can't hear you--”

He fumbles his trousers open. His cock _hurts –_ he pushes Rey back, and she goes willingly, and he sinks into the hilt, into where she's wet and warm and ready for him.

He bites his cheek and thinks of his current budget work to stop himself from coming too quickly. _I need five million credits to finalise the obliteration of the truculent O'bera race –_

He moves gingerly, slowly, even though he wants to fuck her until she can't walk for _days_ , so Kylo Ren – who would see his Order burn! – only needs to look at her once and know where she's been, to know that Hux was inside her, that Hux was where Kylo Ren can only _dream of being_ –

“Go on. Go on. I want you to. Fucking Force, that's the _whole point_ of this.”

Hux pulls out, even though it is _torture_ to do so. “Turn around,” he says. She flashes her teeth in a carnivore's smile, then obliges, hopping off his desk, bracing her hands on the edge.

He enters her in one brutal shove, and bites the flesh where her shoulder meets her neck until she gasps, pushing back against him. He hits her arse – not _spanks_ , because that suggests a note of playfulness but properly _hits_ , so the sound of leather hitting flesh echoes. And yet he knows that he can only hurt her because she permits him to; he can only bury his cock inside her, fucking her so hard that the desk skids; angling up and in, her cunt clutching tight and wet around him – he can only do this because she wants him to.

She could kill him with a thought. She could have Ren kill him. She's stronger than him in every way, and yet he can come inside her, collapsing panting atop her as her skin blooms red and striped, and he can pull out and cock his head on one side, admiring the glisten of his cum on her thighs as it trickles out of her – one hand on the small of her back, holding her in place while she smiles indulgently at him.

“I take it this is what you'll be thinking of next time you two bicker?”

“Oh _yes_. I can afford to upset him. Snoke still needs me. Ren can rant and rave all he likes but they can't kill me yet.”

“I won't let them,” Rey says. “I still need you.”

“And when you don't need me anymore?”

Rey pushes back from the desk, dressing quickly.“Well, we'll see won't we?”

Hux offers her his hand. They shake.

“We will,” he says. 

Rey's eyes are flat and grey. The air, once again, feels greasy and full of static. Hux thinks of the desert, red and blustering, full of death; and yet, in its heart, this girl lived. Thrived. Grew up strong and hungry and bold. 

He looks away first. 

 

 


End file.
